NEW ON TV
Three's a crowd, four's a marriage
*HBO's "Big Love" probes the polygamists next door. It's
family values
of the provocative kind.

By Lynn Smith, Times Staff Writer

Maybe you know a family like the Henricksons. But
probably not.

The father, Bill, is a genial home improvement chain
store owner in
Salt Lake City. He lives with three wives and seven
children, in three
adjacent homes in the suburbs. Needless to say, it's
complicated.

Some of their problems are the usual ones — work, money,
sex, children
— scaled up by a factor of three. The others are
extraordinary. As
extralegal, consenting polygamists trying to blend into
respectable
society, they must hide their arrangement from the
neighbors, the
police and the mainstream Mormon community. And then
there are the
fundamentalist relatives — eccentric, corrupt and
possibly homicidal —
who live off the grid in a rural compound but can't stay
out of Bill,
Barb, Nicki and Margene's life.

What glues them all together is "Big Love," the title of
HBO's new
version of the twisted family drama that attracted so
many devotees to
"The Sopranos" and "Six Feet Under." Though the
modern-day polygamy
might shock some and repulse, tickle or titillate
others, the network
and the family's creators, Mark V. Olsen and Will
Scheffer, expect
people will relate to the Henricksons because they
epitomize, in their
own way, the essence of Middle American family values.

Big love, Scheffer said, is "that bigness and generosity
of heart that
allows you to survive the messiness." The series, which
has 12
episodes this season, premieres March 12.

After middling successes with original series such as
"Rome,"
"Deadwood" and "Entourage," and misfires such as "The
Comeback," HBO
executives must surely hope "Big Love" will renew its
reputation for
top-notch original series. In "The Sopranos" and "Six
Feet Under,"
audiences related to characters who would otherwise
appear alien
through the ordinariness of their family lives. In "Big
Love," the
characters would be quilts-on-the-wall,
family-dinner-type,
sports-loving suburbanites were it not for their secret
life.

The ensemble project has attracted the talents of
feature film
veterans Bill Paxton in his first romantic lead as the
square-jawed,
work-a-daddy Bill; Jeanne Tripplehorn as the reluctant
but solid first
wife, Barb; Chloë Sevigny as the troublemaking,
shopaholic second
wife, Nicki; and Ginnifer Goodwin as the inexhaustible
and naïve
third.

"We're playing these characters dead earnest," said
Paxton, who
portrays the head of the family with his own soft Texas
lilt and the
hint of a shaman's powerful inner life. He sees Bill as
a contemporary
Michael Corleone figure who hopes to break away from
Juniper Creek but
is constantly pulled back.

Though the actors knew next to nothing about the
modern-day
polygamists they would play, they said they came to
understand and
even, in some cases, admire their characters. "Once you
get past the
logistics and the shock, you actually fall in love with
them," Goodwin
said. The suburban Henrickson family clearly abhors such
abuses as the
marriage of young girls to older men on the compound,
and Bill works
hard to support the family and keep in touch with the
children. Each
wife has her own reason for choosing the situation.

"In the society we are representing, there are these
women for whom
this is the answer to their problems, not a problem in
and of itself,"
Goodwin said. "It will bowl over our audience, and will
educate them."

Separate and apart

Predictably, the show has struck a few nerves with
Mormons, who
officially banned polygamy more than a century ago but
can't shake the
association in the public mind. To keep church officials
in the loop,
but not in a consulting role, HBO scheduled several
meetings with them
in which they listened to the church's concerns and
shared a few rough
cuts.

"Obviously, we don't like the program," said Mike
Otterson, director
of media relations for the Church of Jesus Christ of
Latter-day
Saints. "The sexuality of the program, the nature of the
program, is
not what we would like, relate to or recommend," he
said. "We're a
church. You wouldn't expect us to like that sort of
programming."

In the show, the Henricksons have the sex lives of
bunnies. In demand
from the enthusiastic Margene, the seductive Barb and
the intense
Nicki, Bill gets by with a little help from Viagra. It
is clear,
however, that while they also have a rich spiritual
life, they are not
churchgoers and do not belong to the mainstream Mormon
community.

Specifically, Otterson said, "We could see just another
wave of
confusion about our association with polygamy. The
church discontinued
polygamy in 1890 and yet there are polygamous groups in
the U.S. and
Canada. Not all claim to have origins [in the Mormon
Church], some
do."

Already, in fact, Vogue magazine is preparing a
correction of an
article about the show that described it as portraying
Mormons, he
said. The first episode will end with a clarification
explaining there
are 20,000 to 40,000 polygamists in the U.S. who have
had no official
affiliation with the church.

The idea for a show about modern-day polygamists arose
one Christmas
when Olsen and Scheffer, who are writing and domestic
partners, were
driving home from visiting relatives in Nebraska. "We
were doing our
seasonal TV movie go-out-and-pitch gig" Olsen said. "I
said, 'Let's do
a series on polygamy.' "

The more they explored the idea, the more they realized
polygamists
could embody universal and admirable qualities that
define the best
family love. "We're very much populists in what we're
going for. We
don't like cynical.... We want people to fall in love
with these
characters and to root for this family," Olsen said. The
show,
produced by Tom Hanks' Playtone Productions, has become
their biggest
project to date.

Because the show subtly champions an expanded definition
of marriage
and family, one Internet critic called it a "stalking
horse" for gay
marriage rights. In one episode, Stanton's character
explains to
fictional Los Angeles Times reporters that if courts
recognize privacy
rights for homosexuals, it's time they do the same for
polygamists.
Later, his wives are taken aback when the headline
quotes him as
saying "We're just like homosexuals."

"We thought that made such interesting, strange and
perverse
bedfellows that it was just too delicious not to use,"
Olsen told a
gathering of television critics last month. More
recently, he said
they never aimed to use the show to promote gay marriage
rights. "It's
a complex stew with a complex rendering," he said. "If
people in the
gay community want to embrace the show, identify with
their struggle,
so be it."

To achieve cultural accuracy with their scripts, they
said they
embarked on a steep and intensive learning curve
involving historical
research, discovering that families of consenting adults
are common
enough in cities, towns and suburbs in the intermountain
West to have
their own magazines and popular novels.

Utah state officials confirmed that thousands of
polygamists, like the
fictional Henricksons, are leaving rural compounds and
trying to fit
into mainstream society. "They live among us," said Paul
Murphy, a
spokesman for the Utah attorney general's office. "It
used to be
hidden, but it's becoming more open," he said, noting
that such
families often have a hard time blending in because they
were raised
in isolation. Most are consenting relationships, but
even among those
that are abusive or coercive, prosecutions are extremely
rare, partly
because it is hard to find practitioners to testify, he
said.

Olsen and Scheffer visited, briefly, some of the
best-known
fundamentalist enclaves, such as Colorado City in
Arizona. They also
sent away for popular novels published for the
polygamist community.
"They had titles like 'The Murder of a Polygamist' or 'A
Teenager
Cries All Night,' " Olsen said.

Initially shocked at the tawdry material, he said he was
hooked after
10 or 15 pages. The writers were inspired by the
humanity of the
characters and the dramatic moral decisions they must
face, he said.
"When a parent has to turn to a child and say, 'Your
father and I have
decided we're going to take another wife into the
marriage,' it's
insane. You just become pulled into it," he said. "It's
riveting
stuff."

To make the characters relatable, the creators
cherry-picked qualities
from members of their own families — particularly the
women. The
outspoken Lois, for instance was based on Olsen's
mother. "In the
pilot, everything out of that character's mouth came out
of my
mother's mouth at one time or another." His mother, he
said, "went to
Berkeley, studied anthropology with Margaret Mead. She's
a smart
woman. At the end of the day, she is a character."

'These are dream roles'

At a time when strong female roles are rare in movies
and television,
"Big Love" is a candy store for actresses. "There are
feminist
analogies in the material," Scheffer said. Polygamist
women, who are
bonded to one another as well as to their husband, have
strong and
close relationships, he said. "They find their power
with and in each
other."

"It's not just a marriage between a man and a woman,"
explained
Tripplehorn who, like the other cast members, spoke of
the characters
as if they were real people. "A woman doesn't enter into
that
relationship without the agreement of the other woman,
or women. If
one had said no, then Margene wouldn't have been in the
marriage."

As Bill's first wife, Barb is a mainstream Mormon whose
motives for
agreeing to polygamy are said to be related to a
previous bout with
cancer, but remain murky. "The reason she did it shows
how controlling
Barb is, going to pick out her husband's new wife,"
Tripplehorn said.

At first, Tripplehorn had trouble relating to her
character and
understanding the nuances of the relationships, she
said. "Up to that
point, I had never given polygamy a thought."
Eventually, she realized
it is a sisterhood. "Barb has to look at Nicki and
Margene as
co-wives. It all boiled down to the essence of family,"
she said.
"They are family, and when push comes to shove they are
going to be by
each other's side, possibly for eternity, I don't know."

Though Barb can be saintly, Tripplehorn said, "I have to
remember that
whenever she's out in the world, she's living a complete
and total
lie."

In contrast, Sevigny's Nicki grew up in the
fundamentalist compound,
as did Bill. A catalog shopaholic who wears braids and
pioneer clothes
and calls Suze Orman for advice, Nicki is the most
likely to fly off
the handle. "That's why I was so attracted to her,"
Sevigny said. "You
don't know what she's going to do next."

Olsen and Scheffer said they wrote the part with Sevigny
in mind. "We
find her fascinating and enigmatic," Olsen said. Sevigny,
who had been
angling for a role in "Deadwood" or any HBO drama, said
she was
thrilled.

"These are dream roles," said Goodwin, who plays the
playful Margene,
a lonely outsider who longed to join the family
expecting to find a
loving, perfect environment. The three wives are the
richest female
characters she's ever come across, said Goodwin, who
recently
portrayed the first wife of Johnny Cash in "Walk the
Line."

Margene, a mother of two who still relates to the
family's teenagers
more than the adults, is constantly shocked and appalled
that the
household doesn't run smoothly, Goodwin said. "She
exhausts me."

Still, there remains the question of whether or not the
show
glamorizes the practice of polygamy.

"I don't think it does," said Carolyn Strauss, president
of HBO
Entertainment. "These are people who struggle with their
life. The
compound shows a very different side of it. What this
show does is
really examine marriage as an institution.